There is sustained interest in moringa (malunggay), particularly its health benefits, judging from the search terms that lead surfers to this site. Moringa powder in capsules is already being distributed commercially. It won’t be long before it goes into the mainstream market of health supplements, which tend to be expensive. Sales pitch rests on the many nutrients of moringa which you may read here.
Now that I think about it, there shouldn’t be much problem about malnutrition in the country, considering that malunggay is an abundant vegetable. There shouldn’t be such controversy as the DepEd multi-million peso noodles feeding program, when nutrient-packed malunggay can be had for free in the countryside, and which doesn’t cost much in urban centers. (The controversial noodles are reported to be fortified with malunggay and eggs.) The problem probably lies on the fact that when malunggay leaves do find their way into our dining tables, we only eat them in small quantities, such as when we put the leaves into our tinolang manok or dinengdeng. Those small quantities do not provide us all the nutrients we can get from malunggay. Here is where we must find ways that we can consume sufficient quantities of the plant so that we get the most nutrients from it.

Miki (flour noodles) is now being fortified with squash and malunggay by small scale, home-based entrepreneurs in the province. Could powdered moringa be done in the household level, too? For my little experiment, I started with about 2 kilos of fresh leaves (petioles included), which we harvested from the barrios for free. The leaves were very clean since they’ve been washed by the intermittent rains. And I must say, organic, too, as people here do not use chemicals to grow malunggay. I found the procedure for making powdered moringa on this site.

Air-dried moringa leaves

Roasted moringa leaves

I air-dried the leaves in a spare room that doesn’t get direct sunlight to prevent oxidation. I dried it longer than the prescribed maximum of 3 days because it was a rainy week. I would visit the leaves daily, removing the petioles that have separated from the leaves during the drying process. On the fourth day, we separated the dried leaves from the remaining petioles using a strainer with a wire mesh with holes large enough for the petioles to fall through. Those that were too thick had to be removed by hand, so it was a time-consuming process (but can be done in front of the tv). After all the cleaning, I had one-fourth kilo of dried malunggay leaves. I pan-roasted them over low fire, in 4 batches, until the leaves were crunchy to the touch, turning them over constantly to avoid over-cooking. I then powdered the leaves using a blender, but I think a mortar and pestle can also do the job. Putting them in capsules is tricky but can be mastered after about 30 capsules. The one-fourth kilo of dried malunggay leaves yielded about 500 capsules. As for the dosage, I still have to scour the web for information about that. The point is, in capsules, we can now consume malunggay as a food supplement on a daily basis, without our taste buds getting tired of it. In powder form, it can be mixed with other dishes. Oh, and the unpowdered roasted leaves is malunggay tea, another expensive health food I have seen in the market.

Making powdered malunggay is not that difficult. The DepEd could have just allocated the money for all the schools and had the parents’ association work together to make powdered malunggay that can be used to fortify meals, which the parents themselves (bayanihan-style) can cook for the school feeding program using fresh local produce. With nutritious vegetables like malunggay in our backyards, solving malnutrition shouldn’t be another root of anomaly in this already graft-ridden government.

Filed under: Health and food, June 2009 | You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.